Thumbnail photo by Persephone Rose
Nearly six months after Del Norte County rolled out its new Providing Access to Hope program, Behavioral Health Director Shiann Hogan briefly mentioned Sutter Coast Hospital’s new EmPATH unit.
Hogan had brought her staff and the clients they serve before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to commemorate May as Mental Health Awareness Month. In addition to thanking her team — “the ones doing the daily work to improve lives” — Hogan said the hospital’s latest development is one of several new treatment options that will be available on the North Coast.
“Yesterday it was announced by the governor many projects that are going to be funded through the Prop 1 BCHIP funds,” she said, referring to the Proposition 1 Bond Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program.
Those projects include the EmPATH Unit at Sutter Coast, along with the Yurok Tribe’s new wellness center that will be constructed near Weitchpec and a new building for Sempervirens Psychiatric Health Facility in Eureka.
“It’s just amazing to see many new treatment options coming,” Hogan said. “While we’re going to need to wait and be patient while they’re being built, it’s just a great new resource for all of us.”
Groundbreaking for the great new resource at Sutter Coast Hospital is set for June 2, Director of Operations Ellie Popadic told Redwood Voice Community News on Monday.
Sutter Coast Hospital is the recipient of about $4 million in Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program dollars, according to a list of grant awardees from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
On Monday, Newsom announced that $3.3 billion in BCHIP funds would be used to create more than 5,000 residential treatment beds and 21,800 outpatient options for those seeking behavioral health services.
Once Sutter Coast Hospital’s EmPATH unit is up and running, patients would still present at its emergency department, Popadic said, but once they’re medically cleared, staff will escort them to the new facility.
“It’s not like a traditional ER,” she said. “It’s a calm therapeutic environment where our patients can receive timely psychiatric assessments. They are able to be stabilized. It’s usually short-term treatment. And the goal is to really reduce stress for the patient, avoid unnecessary hospitalizations and be able to connect the patient with appropriate long-term resources like outpatient therapy.”
EmPATH stands for Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment and Healing and is based on a model created by Dr. Scott Zeller, who was a medical director for a psychiatric emergency center in Alameda, California, according to a September 2023 Psychology Today article by William Haseltine.
According to Haseltine, Zeller had been frustrated that the default treatment for those presenting to the emergency room with mental health crises was admitting them and placing them into inpatient care.
On Monday, Popadic said that while there are EmPATH units operating throughout the country, including some parts of California, Sutter Coast Hospital’s program will be the first in a rural community.
One question Sutter representatives and other collaborators they worked with, including county Behavioral Health staff, had to answer was whether an EmPATH unit in Del Norte County would be feasible, she said.
“It’s really understanding what can be offered in the unit; how is that offered,” Popadic said. “It’s partnering with our county mental and behavioral health services to talk about logistics and how we partner on caring for individuals in our community that are having mental and behavioral health crises. It’s been a great partnership. It’s also looking at the long-term sustainability of being able to have patients in a unit like this because it is very, very different.”
Initial grant dollars to develop the EmPATH program in Sutter Coast Hospital came from the California Commission for Behavioral Health, Popadic said. The BCHIP funding is meant to help build the facility, Popadic said.
“It will be in very close proximity to the main hospital, essentially right out in front of the hospital,” she said. “The unit will be able to serve up to eight patients at a time and it will be designated for both pediatric and adult patients.”
Inside, the EmPATH unit will feature recliners in a more open communal setting. Patients will have access to a small kitchenette, a washer and dryer, Popadic said. The environment is designed to be similar to a “normal living situation,” although the patient is only meant to be there for a short while, she said.
Hospital officials say more patients will be able to be brought through a crisis in the EmPATH unit, Popadic said. And, while some may need to go from the EmPATH program to inpatient psychiatric treatment, most will be able to return home.
“It’s a more calming healing milieu for those patients to be in until they’re able to be placed into and receive acceptance in one of the inpatient [programs],” she said. “It should hopefully make the experience until that patient is placed more comforting.”
According to Popadic, the hospital anticipates the EmPATH unit to be completed by Feb 1, 2026 and to accept patients shortly after. She said the program will work with Del Norte County’s mobile mental health crisis program, Providing Access To Hope.
“There are ongoing conversations and collaboration with the county with both of these projects and how they work together,” she said. “Meeting patients in the field where they’re at and trying to help and provide care and de-escalation for them right then and there and, if for some patients, that may not be what’s needed and if not they would still be brought into the ER and then they’d be able to come to the EmPATH unit.”
On Tuesday, Hogan told county supervisors that PATH staff had responded to about 50 calls since the program launched Feb. 3. Hogan said her team received their uniforms this week and are excited to be wearing them and the program’s van has been completed.
“We are waiting for it to trek across the U.S. from Pennsylvania to here,” she said. “That’ll give them that mobile office where they can conduct services. You’ll see us in the Fourth of July parade this year. We’re getting out there and letting the community know that we’re here and we’re able to respond to anybody in crisis.”
